Ukraine has launched a bitter attack on the BBC, with senior officials describing a controversial Panorama documentary that claimed racism was rife in the country as an unacceptable provocation.

Ukrainian officials insist there have been no racist incidents in their country since the Euro 2012 football championships kicked off last week. The worst clashes between Russian and Polish fans were in the Polish capital Warsaw on Tuesday, they point out, with 183 fans arrested, and 10 injured in a series of ugly running street brawls.

"The Panorama programme was a direct assault," Oleg Voloyshn, the foreign ministry spokesman in Kiev, said, accusing the BBC of "lowering expectations" and deliberately trying to sabotage the tournament. He added: "It was a kind of provocation." Voloyshn acknowledged there was racism in Ukraine but added: "It's in every country. And it's a smaller problem than was shown in the film."

The documentary, "Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate", was broadcast on May 28. It showed a group of Indian supporters being punched and kicked at a Ukraine league match, and showed Polish fans chanting anti-semitic slogans. The graphic footage prompted the former England defender Sol Campbell to urge England fans to stay away from Euro 2012 or risk coming home "in a coffin".

But Voloyshn said the BBC had not answered the questions of how widespread racism was in Ukraine, and how serious the risk was to fans. He said racism was a problem that undoubtedly needed to be addressed, but said that Britain and other EU countries suffered from it too.

"We don't have real racism en masse in Ukraine. We have nationalists. They are anti-Russian, anti-Polish and anti-European. But the biggest problem so far has been between Russians and Poles. And the Poles are already in the European Union." He said east Europeans frequently suffered discrimination themselves in western Europe and said that Ukraine "never had a colonial past".

The BBC has robustly defended the programme. It says it was made in accordance with strict editorial guidelines. There have been apparent incidents of racist abuse in Poland since Euro 2012 began, with Dutch players subjected to monkey chants during their opening training session in Krakow.

Voloshyn's assertion that Ukraine had been unfairly tarnished followed another complaint from Jonathan Ornstein, the executive director of the Jewish centre in Krakow, who features in the programme. Ornstein accused Panorama last week of selective or "tendentious" reporting and said his remarks that isolated incidents of anti-semitism were not representative of Poland as a whole were dropped because they didn't fit the BBC's "sensationalist" agenda.

Other sources have come forward to say that an interview with a Jewish Israeli player was also cut from the programme because he failed to confirm Panorama's "anti-semitism" thesis. The BBC interviewed midfielder Aviram Baruchian, who plays for the Polish team Polonia Warsaw.

One source who was present said the Panorama journalists had complained afterwards that the interview was "useless". Panorama strongly denies this. It says the interview wasn't used because Baruchian had only played in the Polish league since January.

Writing last week in a blog, Panorama's editor, Tom Giles, vehemently defended the documentary against Polish and Ukrainian criticism: "We feel strongly that our reporting was both legitimate and fair ... The programme made clear that we were investigating the behaviour of some football supporters and political hooligans – not the peoples of the countries themselves."

Giles continued: "Amid all of these accusations against Panorama and the BBC, there is a real fear that the key issue has been missed – the overt and frightening racist and anti-Semitic abuse and violence of the kind broadcast by Panorama is both wrong and deeply upsetting to those on its receiving end. That was the point of the programme. We set out to highlight a wrong."

The BBC added on Wednesday: "Panorama filmed at nine recent football matches in Poland and Ukraine and at every one recorded racist and/or violent behaviour by football supporters. This was most graphically demonstrated in Ukraine, where a group of Asian students were viciously assaulted inside the Metalist stadium, which is hosting Euro 2012 matches. To date no politician, football or police official in Ukraine has condemned these incidents or expressed concern for those on the receiving end."